Blog 6

More people in the profession of teaching English need to read Romano’s piece in the WTL. Why, you ask? Simple and easy, fiction, truth, lies and fancy are all part of the process of writing. Not the “formal” process that is championed across the ranks of the intellectual elite, but the true process of writing, the ability for a writer to weave many disparate genres, subjects, and ideas into one weaving piece. Research, myth, truths and half truths are all part of the reality of writing, without it…well without it writing would be nothing more than math, and math by its nature is evil. On a side note I wish I could trace my family back even as near as immigration.

Indifference Spandel says is “the most insidious enemy to writing. Indifference says to a reader, ‘This is a dull topic about which I have not one shred of curiosity’” (132). If this is the case I wonder why many teachers and professors continue to assign boring, dried out topics that have been beaten like the proverbial “dead horse?” True this might sound mean, rude even, but then again I too have bee taught to “write from the heart” and boy what a folly that was on the fool who hammered that into my cynical skull. Spendal however has a point in her chapter on voice, it is an important aspect of writing, it is power and the use of it or in some cases the disuse of it can prove the most effective part of the paper to be written. A subject can be bland as hell, like for instance the color orange, but if the writer some how through the grace of whatever writing deity he or she prays to manages to show general enthusiasm in the writing the boring subject at least becomes interesting enough for the writer to make it through awake … Smith could learn from this. I will also go as far to as agree that voice is not something that can be taught, but it can be influenced, and the question is should the influencing source be controlled? Personally I think not, I would hate to allow the likes of Charlotte Bronte (who for some strange reason is loved in the literature world) to influence the writing voices of my students, after all I wish to be awake after reading their papers.

“Even when we pass our time in apparently trivial occupations, watching a mundane television program or reading a pulp novel … (Smith 179). Once again the dark wraith of intellectual elitism makes its presence known, however, that is a topic I have already discussed in an earlier post, and is the major subject (although it may be cut due to issues of fear) in a upcoming paper so I will not once again “rant” about this. I will say though that the continued presence of this wraith in our “enlightened” community that has supposedly stepped out of the dark ages of the early 20^th century disgusts me. Going on … Everything we do is a part of learning from taking a shower (where some of the best ideas, connections and epiphanies occur) to reading through a pulp novel only to find buried within it a universal truth. What’s more talking, listening, reading and writing (everything from a shopping list to a master’s thesis) all contribute to both the learning process and the writing process. At least that’s what I got out of Smith this time, and I could be wrong … My body is so full of caffeine on a normal basis that even a 40 oz. dark roast coffee with 6 shots of espresso and two crushed up no-doz pills instead of sugar can keep me awake and a tired me equals a me who is so out of it the sound of the word “muffin” makes me laugh.

“Reading, just reading for the sheer joy of it, is among the least valued but most worthwhile kinds of professional development” (Spendel 141). If only time permitted such luxury.